Rising Shards

I only had a bit of fondness for Safe Silver while I was at Tesata. My childhood memories of the holiday were mainly me wrestling with the difference of the happy and jovial vibes of the Safe Silver specials we had on tape with the reality of the bleak nothing that was the actual Safe Silver on the Tesata campus. We had teachers explaining why we Cani were actually just irredeemable monsters, and all the atrocities we committed on Safe Silver for our arrival in this world, and why we have to master ourselves to avoid hurting any more people. I was torn between feeling rebellious and denying them, and the worming thoughts that had seen firsthand how dangerous my powers were.

The last Safe Silver before I got to leave that awful place behind, I stared up at the sky. It was snowing, but none of it touched the ground, the flakes arcing away from the island the Tesata campus was housed on. There was some kind of energy charge that blocked severe weather. In all the Safe Silver tapes, kids played in the snow, and I really wanted to do that. But I also was coming off injuring someone with my vine power, so I was dealing with a mix of guilt and anger that things had gotten to that point. I stood outside, a war within me as I waited as long as I could before a faculty member yelled at me to go back inside. I looked at my wrist cloth, my personal reminder to never get as angry as I did when I burned my bully Raeza across his face.

“You could be practicing right now,” I strained to keep a straight face as Mikkel approached. “Or studying.”

Ugh. Mikkel. The headmaster of Tesata. Basically my adoptive parent at this place. My strict, awful parent.

“Meditation can be practicing,” I said.

“It doesn’t look like you’re meditating, it looks like you’re staring blankly into space.” Mikkel said. “Care to tell me what’s wrong?”

Sometimes Mikkel pretended he was nice and tried to convince us he was a good guardian that cared about his students. Some of us fell for it. He got me sometimes. This was unfortunately one of those times. By virtue of not being the worst teacher at this place (none of the others would dare ask us to tell them what’s wrong), I had a snowflake sized feeling that he might have good advice.

“I feel a bit sad about Safe Silver,” I said. “I’m not sure why.”

Mikkel sighed, and the snowflake dissipated immediately, and I knew I made a mistake.

“It’s probably guilt,” Mikkel said. “Guilt for your crimes, and maybe a justifiable guilt for knowing what you are. I would try and channel those feelings into something positive. Don’t be distracted by things like holidays. Cani don’t deserve those. Put that energy into doing what you do deserve.”

“And what is that?” I asked.

“Servitude.” Mikkel said. “There are some leaves gathered around the outdoor training grounds. I’d like you to go rake them. That would be good service.”

He patted my head, and my face involuntarily twitched. Luckily, he didn’t see that.

“I should've figured that’d be your answer.” I muttered as I proceeded to the training grounds for leaf duty very slowly.

Afterwards, Mikkel made me sit in the common area with the other students. I sat in the way back, as far away from anyone as I could. Another teacher wheeled a TV on a cart in. I was hoping for a nice Safe Silver movie, preferably a musical, as a nice reward for leaf duty. Instead, I was treated to a movie I could tell was ancient that was unbelievably biased against celebrating Safe Silver, but presented the material in such a way I almost laughed.

“Well little boy, I say you come find a lovely family for Safe Silver," A ghostly figure told a little fella who was kicking a can around. "Why, you could tell them all about your problems and I’m sure they’d help you!”

“Gosh, I’d rather…well, I’d rather just keep things to myself.” The boy said, taking his cap off and putting it back on several times. “Safe Silver is for Cani, and I don’t think Cani are particularly worth celebrating.”

“Oh, you may regret that…don’t you want to make some new friends at least?”

“Not really.”

“Oh. Huh. Really?”

“Yeah.”

“OK…”

Then the kid walked away, and the credits slowly rolled. The movie’s run time was like twelve minutes. Mikkel had a very long speech afterward about how this was one of his favorite movies, because of course it was. The movie was hilariously bad, even I could tell that with my limited movie know-how, but as funny as it was, a bitter feeling wormed its way into my guts. Even if I didn’t believe it, hearing that Cani weren’t worth celebrating hurt.

* * *

It was now the season of my first Safe Silver at Tesata, and I was having similar conflicting feelings, though luckily I was able to stand outside during the day without anyone caring. It was nice to watch snow fall all the way to the ground, and to step in it, walk around in it. Even getting it in my boots, cold and gross as it was, felt like a secret winter trick I’d never been able to have before. My phone rang, interrupting me from my ruminations on snow.

“Heyyy. Hi.” I said. “Hello. Berint.”

“Hey there, Oka,” Berin said. “I’m going shopping for Safe Silver ornaments this week and wanted to check, would you like to join me?”

“I…” I said. “Um…can we next week? I kind of have a thing with some friends right now.”

“Sure, no worries,” Berin said. “Have you given any thoughts to being the wintry queen?”

“I uh,” I squinted. There was a Safe Silver tradition I’d never heard of, where communities would have a little play about the holiday. Berin, knowing that I’m big into acting, said he had some connections with the town’s holiday planning department and could get me a role. It would only be a few lines, but I had a deep need to act, even if the movie making club was moving along nicely. “I still am not quite sure. Another week on that, too?”

“Yeah, of course.” I could hear the disappointment in his voice, so I lied and said I was busy right now and ended the call quickly.

I was somewhat avoiding Berin, who kept asking to do Safe Silver related activities. I didn’t really think about it before, but the holiday actually being close brought back a bunch of bad memories, moods, and more, and I just wanted to hide a bit.

I looked at my phone more, and it hit me. The phone was an early Safe Silver gift from Zeta, and thinking about that didn’t give me bad vibes. As usual when I had to investigate something, I had a special rule: when in doubt, find Zeta.